Paint Models, Get Money? How To Go “Pro-Painter”

Ever wanted to paint miniatures for money? Max has some tips and tricks for how to do it, and actually make money instead of losing it to labor.

Today, we cover the painting aspect of this. Like the first part of the series, it will be broken down in multiple plan, based on your interest and skill level.New-Hammer is the perfect time for painting studios, because it offers multiple opportunities and projects of various lengths, for existing painters or budding artists

Step 4: Paint it Like you Mean It

In the planning stage, we covered why painted sets were a better opportunity. Now we’ll cover how to paint them.

How to paint them really depends on the quality of your painting and how many starter sets you are willing to commit to this.

A lot of the theory and reasonning behind the painting strategy will be covered in the selling part tomorrow. In the meantime, focus on painting.

If you are new to the commish painting game, pick the level that seems the best for you; either what you enjoy doing or that you feel confident in doing.If you have a business already, pick the one that fits you current client base.

This is a two-prong approach, as it will make it easier to sell to your existing clients and will gather new clients that like your painting style. If you do high end starters but never paint high end commish, those clients are kinda wasted after the starter set extravaganza is over.

The most important part here is to pick a strategy and stick with it. Don’t try to do a little bit of this, a little bit of that.

Our selling strategy is to stay focused on one level and quality and make the most out of it.

Low Level

We are talking demo sets and tabletop quality here.

This level is perfectly fine if you are into the army painter’s approach of painting: Colored Primer, One Color everything, Quickshade, Varnish. Wham! Bam! Donzo.

This is one of my favorite level, because it’s available for anyone, provided you don’t mind speed painting.

For this level, you want to get as many starter sets as you can bang out in a reasonable pace. Painting 1 set might take 5 hours total, but painting 3 sets will take 6 total, so the more the merrier.

Because anyone can paint this level, you can also team up with a buddy to paint up more sets quickly ( and cut the initial starting cost in half )

Mid Level

For lack of a better term, we’ll call this the Duncan quality level. Models at the level or about of the Games Workshop stuff.

This level is great because it offers the most selling options.

In terms of quantity, the keyword here is to pick a reasonable number that you can paint. Yes, if you can do 5 sets in the week, this is possible.

But if you are burned out and bummed after 3, the 2 others are pretty much wasted. Or worse if you starter all 5 and can’t finish any.

So pick a reasonable number and go for it.

Top Tier Level

This level covers model that either look awesome on the table or stay in a display case.

This level is a tricky one, because the selling options are more limited. Painting at that level is also not for everyone; if you’ve never painted a large number of high quality models, don’t assume you can.

If line painting makes you want to hang yourself, or if you truly only can afford one set, this is the place to go.

The key of this painting strategy is to know where to stop. Painting the Captain in Gravitas Armor or Whatshisface the Plague Lord to the best of your ability makes sense.

Spending the same time on every line trooper is a waste of energy.

Again, I can’t stress how important sticking to one level is here. Don’t mix and match, don’t try a little bit of this, a little of that. Pick one; stick with it; win big.

The goal is to paint everything in order to sell it to the best of it’s quality.

The painting strategies are design to help you sell everything for profit, and not stay stuck with parts of it. Getting stuck with parts of kit and later selling them at discounted price cuts directly in your profit, so we want to avoid that at all cost.

About Hellfire Painting

Max Dubois is a hobby enthusiast from Quebec that runs most things named Hellfire Painting. Max produces a lot of hobby ressources that you can find on his own blog as well as well as on Spikey Bits.
He is always ready to talk shop with other enthusiasts, whether it's about, painting, playing or drinking, no matter your skill level in either those activities.
You can also find some of his work on amazon kindle, where he sells hobby e-books for a dollar!

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Spikey Bits is site about the hobby of tabletop wargaming. It is our mission to bring you the latest from the miniature wargaming scene, from narrative missions, hobby how to tutorials, battle reports, unboxings and reviews, retro flashbacks, news, rumors and more. We mainly cover Warhammer 40k, Fantasy, Age of Sigmar, Warmachine, Hordes, X-Wing, Infinity, Horus Heresy, and Star Wars Armada. We'll show you all the aspects of the hobby from converting and painting models to actually playing the game.